The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument and, more particularly, to a chord storing apparatus to be employed in the instrument which is able to simplify the operation of causing a chord to be stored.
According to the chord storing apparatus of the conventional electronic musical instrument, to cause the chord to be stored, a record button was depressed to put a chord storing apparatus into a record mode, a method of determining a chord was selected by a musical performance mode specifying button, a chord was determined through depression of the keyboard or the like in accordance with the musical performance mode, and the inputting operation of the chord length specification for determining the length of the chord was required to be performed. The musical performance mode specification button refers to a button for determining a musical performance mode, such as: a one finger mode, which is a musical performing method of determining a chord through depression of one key of the keyboard; a finger mode, which is a musical performing method of determining a chord through depression of a plurality of hand keyboards in accordance with the composing sound of the chord or a separated pedal mode, which is a performing method for determining the chord through selection of the bass sound of the chord, by a pedal keyboard or foot keyboard, through the depression of the composing sound of the chord by a manual keyboard or hand keyboard (hereinafter they are referred to as one finger mode, finger mode, separated pedal mode, and are called musical performance modes as a general term).
Referring to FIG. 1, a manual keyboard or hand keyboard 1 is connected to a circuit 2 for detecting depressed key note names. A note name corresponding to the keyboard depressed by the hand keyboard 1 is depressed so that hand keyboard note name information can be provided. A pedal keyboard or foot keyboard 3 is connected to a circuit 4 for detecting depressed note names. A note names corresponding to the keyboard depressed by the foot keyboard 3 is detected so that foot keyboard note name information can be provided. A circuit 5 for specifying a finger chord type specifies the information of chord types (major, minor, seventh, etc.) in the one finger mode, whereby the chord type information for one finger use is provided. A circuit 6 for specifying musical performance specifies the performance mode in accordance with the musical performance mode of the one finger, finger or the like selected by the performer. A circuit 7 for distinguishing chords distinguishes chords, to which the musical performance mode information, the hand keyboard note name information, the foot keyboard note name information, and the chord type information for one finger are inputted, and further distinguishes chords depressed by the hand keyboard note name information, the foot keyboard note name information and the chord type information for one finger use in accordance with the performance mode to thereby detect the chord information (C major, E minor, etc.). A chord information detecting apparatus 8, which is composed of the hand keyboard 1, the depressed key note name detecting circuit 2, the foot keyboard 3, the depressed key note name detecting circuit 4 and the chord type specifying circuit 5 for one finger use, as described hereinabove, detects the chord information of the keyboard depressed in accordance with the musical performance mode. A chord length specifying circuit 9 outputs the information as to the time duration (one bar, half a bar, etc.) of the chord information and such time duration information is stored in a memory 11 by a write circuit 10.
However, under such conventional construction as described hereinabove, the chord detecting apparatus 8 had no functions for automatically detecting the musical performance mode. To store the chord, the musical performance-mode specifying circuit 6 had to be operated to specify the musical performance mode, thus resulting in extremely difficult operation.